Online content providers can provide electronic content to computing devices via networks such as the internet. The term “electronic content” refers to any type of media that can be displayed or played on mobile and other computing devices. Computing devices include devices such as desktop computers, laptop computers, smart phones, tablet computers, personal digital assistants, etc. Electronic content can include text or multimedia hosted on websites, such as standard web pages or mobile web pages specifically formatted for display on computing devices. Electronic content can also include application software developed for computing devices that is designed to perform one or more specific tasks at the computing device.
Electronic content can be streamed from a server system to a client computing device. Streaming electronic content can include, for example, live and on-demand audiovisual content provided using a streaming protocol, such as (but not limited to) real time messaging protocol (“RTMP”), hypertext transfer protocol (“HTTP”) dynamic streaming (“HDS”), and HTTP Live Streaming (“HLS”). A server system can provide multiple renditions of electronic content having different quality levels. The ability of the client computing device to render streaming electronic content without interruptions or buffering can be negatively impacted by conditions such as the bandwidth of a network connection between the client computing device and the server system and/or the load on a processor of the client computing device.